People who believed more in a biological or genetic cause were more likely to believe that people with mental health problems were unpredictable and dangerous, more likely to fear them and more likely to avoid interacting with them.

Bob Abernethy, Arthur Kleinman on Caregiving
*Touching interview with Arthur Kleinman about caring for his wife, Joan, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2003.

Alex Golub, The Trashing of Margaret Mead
*It’s not nice to criticize the dead. Book review of Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an anthropological controversy by Paul Shankman, an account of Freeman’s attack on Mead’s research after her death.

Do Colleges Need French Departments?
*A high-profile panel of professors debate the issue over at the NY Times, prompted by cutbacks in language and humanities at SUNY-Albany (including the elimination of the entire French department)

Jonathan Pritchard, How We Are Evolving
*But here is a broader story than the one played up previously – migration matters a lot, and specific adaptations (and accompanying genetic changes) not so much. It’s behind the Sci Amer paywall, but I really recommend it.
-You can access all of Pritchard’s article at his website

How, then, is it that we are doing so many strange non-ape-ish things? We carry out all sorts of behaviors you shouldn’t see apes doing not because we apes have been reshaped, but because culture has gone out of its way to shape itself to fit our groovy human self. In particular, culture has shaped itself to be “like nature,” thereby best harnessing our ancient inflexible brains for doing something they weren’t designed for, like successfully ordering coffee.

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